Composer Opportunity Archive

Turning Point Ensemble's Music of a Thousand Autumns mines the past

Turning Point Ensemble's Music of a Thousand Autumns mines the past

October 6, 2015 National

Submitted by andrea ayotte on Tue, 10/06/2015 - 11:34

"Charged with writing a new piece for Vancouver’s Turning Point Ensemble, Alexina Louie opted to look back to her own roots in this polyglot city—and to her early days as a student composer in San Diego, California. This doesn’t mean that A Curious Passerby at Fu’s Funeral waxes nostalgic, however. As Louie notes in a telephone interview from her Toronto home, she’s investigating some new ideas, too.

“There are things in this piece that I’ve never done before,” she stresses, citing the new work’s second movement, which initially strikes a meditative stance before moving into far more dramatic terrain. “The piano hammers on the lowest note of the piano, which is a low A, and that goes on for a time, just loud,” she says. “And there are shifting accents that happen down there, so it sort of sounds like drumming..."